Living on Purpose With a Homestead Dream

Living on purpose can keep your dreams alive. Hopes and dreams are like tiny seeds of a future, which when germinated spring forth with life and grow into vision, which ripen into beginnings, which bloom into a harvest of fulfilment. Like any seed, it will shrivel up and die unless given safe conditions in which to wait for the right moment to come alive. If protected from the elements it will lie dormant waiting for the right conditions, fertile soil, adequate moisture and sunlight in which to germinate.

The thing is, there is often a long period of waiting involved with hopes and dreams. As humans we are sometimes not as patient as seeds. We have emotions and circumstances which make us feel impatient, pushed and pulled and generally unsettled. So how do we keep those little hopes and dreams alive and waiting patiently for the right moment?

For me, it is all about living on purpose. It is about making daily choices that walk me forward toward the dream. Or as Jess Sowards from Roots and Refuge says “turning your waiting room into a classroom”.

Recognise the Dream

Before I could live on purpose with my dream, I first had to recognise the dream. Allow myself to speak about it. For a long time I didn’t do that. It was a longing birthed in me, during a childhood of wandering the hills and creek beds of our family farm in southern NSW. A longing to be outside listening to the wind whisper through the she-oaks on the valley floor and the gurgle of the mountain stream as it bubbled along it’s path. Or foraging wild mushrooms on the green pastured hillsides with the cool wind whipping the hair about my face.

I always knew I loved the bush and farm life. That has never changed. But I had placed it aside in my mind as a fond memory and something now out of my reach. Life had changed. We had lost the family farm years before. I had fallen in love with a city boy and was living in a busy coastal town. It was all good. I was not upset or pining for it. We had a good life and I accepted the circumstances for what they were. Every now and then I would smell a smell, or see a sight, that would remind me and I would think, “oh wouldn’t it be amazing if….”

It wasn’t until years later after facing allergies and sickness in the family and spending a lot of time with friends who grew their own food, that the silent longing grew into a still shy dream. It lay there quietly for a while until we started talking about it. Eventually we realised, my hubby and I both had the same dream. A vision of living in a rural setting with acres of land around and growing our own food. A dream of living a healthy simple life with our family.

At first, this seemed like a pie in the sky, pipe dream. It has been years now of praying and waiting and taking three steps forward and two steps back. But deep in our hearts we know this is where we are headed. Now it has grown from a dream to an active goal. So I am living on purpose with that goal in mind.

Live on Purpose by Building Skills

What does living on purpose look like? It looks like building new skills. Deliberately taking time to learn new skills that we know we will need on our little farm. We might not be able to do it all right now, but we can do some things. When we have that big garden with all that produce rolling into the kitchen at harvest, I will need to know how to not only cook that food but how to preserve it as well. These are skills I could be learning right now…fermenting, canning, dehydrating. I can’t learn all those things overnight… so my plan is to slowly slowly add to my skill set.

I have a long way to go but over the years I have begun that process. Sour kraut, pickling, sour dough bread, kambucha, kefir, yoghurt making and dehydrating. Next on my list is cheese making, jam, canning and learning to ferment more veggies. I have a feeling that if I waited until harvest day, I would be very overwhelmed and possibly lose much of our hard earned harvest with rookie mistakes. Better to make those mistakes now using boxes of produce that I haven’t poured my blood sweat and tears into.

Sour dough and Bread Baking

Developing these skills is about more than just preserving the future harvest of our dream homestead. It is also about making healthier choices and equipping our children with skills for their future. After all, that is half the reason for the dream in the first place. For this reason, many of these habits are just as applicable today as they will ever be. I doubt I will ever grow enough grain to harvest my own wheat or rye for bread but that doesn’t mean I want to buy my bread. I wanted to replace store bought bread with sour dough purely for the health benefits.

For years I struggled to really learn the art of sour dough. Regular yeast bread was easy enough but I wanted the health benefits for my family of the fermented bread. But sour dough just seemed so finicky and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. Then last year we invested in an online learning centre called The School of Traditional Skills and it made all the difference. Now I bake sour dough bread every day and I love it! It’s not the fancy super pretty instagram worthy type sour dough, but it’s yummy and soft and wholesome… so it will do the job. And hopefully the longer I practice it, the better I will get at it.

Cooking from scratch with whole foods

Beyond the bread making, part of living a healthy simple life to me, means cooking from scratch meals with whole food ingredients. I grew up on homecooked food so that isn’t so different. But it is the kind of thing where the learning never stops. For example, I am always trying to take traditional meals I am familiar with and tweak them a little to use more wholesome ingredients.

That is another thing I can do right now, no matter where I live. I can buy fresh, local, seasonal ingredients and make wholesome meals. Save the bones to make broth. Source good healthy fats like grass fed lard, tallow, avocado oil or coconut oil to cook with. Begin buying boxes of local fruit in season and learning to make jam.

Making herbal medicines (elderberry syrup)

Learning to make simple herbal remedies doesn’t have to wait either. I can do that now. There are so many things to learn about natural health both preventative and acute care, that it can be hard to know where to start. We don’t have to do it all. Every new skill I learn is one more thing I can do to step my family toward good health and less dependence on the medical system. I am grateful for doctors and nurses and engage their services when needed, but always happy to opt for self care when we can.

For a long time I put off learning herbal remedies because it felt too complicated and I didn’t know where to begin. But then I decided to just start. One small recipe at a time. Practice and repeat until confident then pick another one. A few weeks ago I made elderberry syrup for the first time. It was actually really simple! I followed a recipe on the Homesteading Family website and now have two jars of very tasty immune boosting elderberry syrup in my fridge. Even the baby asks for seconds when I dose everyone up. It is so satisfying to be producing good things for my family!

Living on Purpose by Growing Together

One of the big reasons we have a desire to build a homestead is for the family time and teaching the children valuable life skills. I believe giving them a closer connection to their food, teaching them to steward the land well, and care for their animals, points them to the Creator and honors Him in a powerful way. Here too, we can live on purpose and start doing that today.

We can involve the kids. Let them learn along with us as we gather these new skills. Some of the children love to cook, others like to garden (even if just in pots right now), and others to make things – so wherever they have an interest we let them join in. We homeschool so they are with us all through the day, which makes it easy to involve them in everything we do.

Living on Purpose by Finding Your Tribe

There is nothing better to keep your dreams alive, than hanging out with like minded people who share your ideas and vision for a more agrarian life. Not everyone will get it and that’s ok. We have some friends and family who think we are cray cray! We love them and they love us even though we think differently. But it can be discouraging when you no-one else is on the same page as you and you are constantly laughing off the jokes and sideways looks of your companions. It is much more sustainable and life giving to find your tribe and spend time with them.

You may find them at farmer’s markets. A couple of weeks ago, we were wandering around a local market chatting to vendors and checking out the stalls. We were only there about 45 minutes and in that time we met three local farmers who had a similar focus to us, were invited out to visit one of the farms, and met one couple who were there shopping and who are also developing a little homestead with their family.

Online is another great place to find your tribe. Back in Australia we had a wonderful community and many friends who had the same holistic outlook. Moving to a brand new community in a brand new country can be a tad daunting. We didn’t know anyone who was thinking like us! It turned out that the online world was a fantastic way to connect.

There are now amazing subscription platforms like Abundance Plus and the School of Traditional Skills which have community groups on them where you can meet people in your area. Facebook groups can also be helpful. We have found you can use the internet and local groups to build friendships with like minded people, where you can learn from each other and find encouragement on the journey.

Visit Likeminded Farmers

One of the best things we did when we moved here, was to meet some local homesteaders we found through Abundance Plus. A really cool feature of the platform is a map where you can see other homesteaders in your area. Before we left Australia I reached out on this group with the fact that we were moving to Texas, to ask about farming conditions here and the pros and cons of different parts of the state in choosing a location. We knew we didn’t want to be too far from Houston (where family are) but far enough to be out of the city limits and flood prone areas.

There were lots of responses from friendly folk who were more than happy to share their knowledge about gardening and farming in their area. First of all, we received some very helpful information about Texas and things to be aware of with land and gardening. Then amongst these responses, we were blessed to have two families invite us to come visit when we landed. It took us a while to get there, but we did end up visiting both those farms.

Honey Hog Farm

The first was Honey Hog Farm near Hempstead. Kristi and Jason and their family made us feel very welcome. We had a great visit, walking around their farm and talking all things homestead and all things Texas. At the end the kids enjoyed helping move some broiler chicks from the brooder out onto pasture. We left feeling we had at last met some fellow cray crays in America who loved the land and loved to grow stuff!

The other thing we left with was an esky full of fresh pasture raised eggs and pork. I think I was most excited by the big jar of lard Kristi handed me as we walked out! Good healthy fats are hard to find when you are living in an airbnb and haven’t found your sources yet. It felt so good to not only find some high quality food but also support a local small farm focused on healing the land as well as growing a top quality product.

Unbowed Meadows Farm

Several weeks later we had the joy of visiting Colin and Jessica on their Unbowed Meadows farm near Mt Pleasant. Colin has Australian family and had Bundaberg Ginger Beer waiting for us nice and chilly in his fridge! I bought apple crumble and anzac bickies to share which seemed to go down well too. Colin and Jessica also made us feel right at home with their open, down-to-earth manner. There was lots to talk about, between Colin’s Australian heritage and our common interest in regenerative farming.

The children loved the visit, with lots of animals to see and pat… goats, horses, ducks, chooks (Australian for chicken), cows and guardian dogs. Jessica’s cousin, who lives on the farm, is a carpenter and had made some excellent animal shelters, including the famous Justin Rhodes chicken tractor. He made some clever adjustments to help manage the goats when they were in the same area. Goats are nimble nosey critters and would climb in the door of the coop and ruin the flooring. So he made a double door… a tiny one for the chooks that could be opened separately when the goats were around, and a bigger door for when it was just chooks at home.

Finally as we were saying our goodbyes, Jessica came out with a bag FULL of eggs as a gift! Eggs are like gold to a large family and organic pasture raised eggs are possibly the best gift you could give me in this season of my life! Happy days 🙂

Living on Purpose by Helping Others

It is possible to dream too much. What I mean is, we can focus all day on the dreams we haven’t attained yet and put all our energy into striving for that and become discouraged. We can become self centred and negative or resentful, about what we don’t have yet. Many many years ago, my husband taught me, that when life is hard, one of the best things you can do, is reach out to help someone else. It takes the focus off yourself. Give instead of trying so hard to receive. Sow instead of searching for the harvest.

It was one of the most important lessons I have ever learned. Not just for when your dreams are delayed. But for any season of life. There will always be hard days. Days when your expectations are not met. Days when you face challenges and setbacks. As humans, we all have a tendency to hyper focus on self. It is a natural self interest, but it is not healthy. Take a moment regularly to turn your focus outward. Especially when you feel like things are outside your control. Stop. Step back. Turn your gaze on others. And ask yourself, how can I be a blessing? How can I give of my time or talents to help someone else?

Build a Garden for Someone Else

Ideally this happens organically, every day as you walk through life and keep your eyes open to the needs of others. Several weeks ago when we were still in the air-bnb house and had no clear direction about where we were going to live or what we were to do next… an opportunity presented itself. We met a family who were beginner gardeners. They were living in the suburbs and working long hours but trying to start a garden in their spare time. Like many first time gardeners, they had had some setbacks, and weren’t sure where to start.

So we offered to help them with their garden. We visited one day with the children and chatted to them about seeds and soil health and just shared some of the things we have learnt over the years. Then we got busy and planned out the garden according to their priorities and the food they like and helped them get those seeds sown. We popped back a week or so later and watered and checked on the garden for them while they were at work. Hopefully it was an encouragement and blessing to them. But to be honest every time we do this – reach out and invest in someone else’s dreams or plans – it always ends up being a blessing to us too!

In this instance it was just so therapeutic for me to get my hands back in the soil after weeks and weeks of no gardening. It was like a breath of fresh air! Also to sit and chat at length about soil health and seeds and garden planning is just my thing and I love it! It certainly didn’t feel like work.

Now, we had lots of other things we could have been doing. Like studying to get our Texas drivers licences, hunting for houses and work. But to turn our focus away from our stressful situation and sow into someone else’s life was not only the right thing to do, it also re-energised us to keep going on our journey.

So whatever your skills are, share them with others. Teach a friend or a neighbour (or in our case, a random person you met!) to garden, or cook, or make a worm farm.

Be Faithful With the Little

At the end of the day, our philosophy in this waiting period, is to be faithful with the little God has given us. Wherever you are, start there and maximise whatever you can in that space. Grow in pots. Work your kitchen. Start a little worm farm. Grow herbs from seed.

Back when we lived on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, we were renting a house on a steep slope that was surrounded by rainforest. There was little space to garden and little sunlight but I was desperate to start and I wanted to be faithful with what I had. We had a neighbour who rented a little apartment attached to our house and she had a flat open area, quite small, that received the most sunlight on the property. It wasn’t being used so I approached her and asked if we could use it for a veggie patch and promised we would share the produce with her. She was keen! So we worked that little patch and grew lettuce, tomatoes, herbs, silverbeet, cucumbers, radishes and bok choy.

So if you, like us, have a dream of living a simple healthy life with a closer connection to the land and your food. If you have been working toward it but your not quite there yet… my encouragement to you is this: choose to live on purpose. Make decisions that both keep your dream alive and propel you forward toward that goal. Work hard, serve others, be faithful with what you have in your hand and trust God with the rest.

Sunshine and raindrops to you my friend. And may your seeds bloom to a fruitful harvest in due time.